In the work plan for the previous three-year period, we outlined our intention to examine the relationship between the public and private spheres, and to clarify the link between education and community life. Both issues involved analyzing diverse processes in countries of the region, processes that were nonetheless subject to homogenizing dynamics. This was the case with educational reform processes and the emergence of public policies aimed at the privatization of education and, in its most advanced form, the commodification of personal development; as well as the broadening of the meaning of education to encompass something beyond the institutionalized transmission of knowledge within the school setting.

Now, in proposing the renewal of this Working Group, we believe it is important to revisit these questions, while highlighting the changing context in some Latin American countries. Government changes in countries like Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; the uncertainty in Venezuela; and the political transformations of some government discourses, as in Ecuador and Bolivia; or in countries like Chile, Colombia, and Peru, where structural adjustments have deepened different governmental logics; in all cases, the region is emerging as one that has undergone structural transformations and redefinitions of the meanings of education and "the commons," and of education as part of the commons. "Neoliberal reason" (Dardot and Laval, 2013) politically articulates certain content at the regional level, forcing the need for precision regarding the issues that bring this Working Group together.

As Dardot and Laval (2013) argue, neoliberalism is a governmental rationality. It is not merely an ideology or an economic policy because it tends to give meaning to, “to structure and organize,” the actions of both those who govern and those who are governed. In their words: “Neoliberalism can be defined as the set of discourses, practices, and mechanisms that determine a new mode of governance of humankind according to the universal principle of competition. Now, how is this determination of a new mode of governance achieved? The question is not foreign to the social sciences; in fact, Gramscian Marxism already accounted for how power must be constructed upon the notion of an active subject, mobilized and convinced of the legitimacy that guides its actions. The notion of hegemony refers both to the structural position of subjects and to the identifications that result from their political articulations.”

Therefore, we should ask ourselves about three issues that will guide the work in the continuation of the activities of this GT.

a. What idea of ​​the commons does neoliberalism uphold? What does the community proclaimed by neoliberal discourse and practices have in common? If one of its key elements, as Dardot and Laval argue, is the imposition of the universal principle of competition, what is the impact of this principle on ways of thinking about, organizing, and giving meaning to the commons? In historical circumstances where the positions of intervening subjects are diverse and changing, and where political identities are hybridized and fragmented, it will be crucial to specify the effects of neoliberalism on the repositioning of disputes between the global and the local, with their different territorial expressions. Answering these questions will require a precise investigation of local forms and the tension they generate with the purported universality of the neoliberal order.

b. What role does education, in its broadest sense as we defined in our previous work, play in this idea of ​​community? What are the ways in which the principle of competition is imposed? What meanings does this principle acquire? How is the principle of competition articulated and accepted, but also resisted and reinterpreted, in the different contexts in which we conduct our research in the region? One of the key points of this Working Group's previous work is that, as mentioned in the 2019 report, the agency of the protagonists in educational processes had a flip side, as they were simultaneously "constrained" by public policies. In this new edition of the Working Group, we aim to answer these questions, assuming that the knowledge circulating is not always socially legitimate, but that it nevertheless includes intensely formative processes to achieve legitimacy. In other words, neoliberal hegemony, like all hegemonies, finds its limits in those formative gaps that emerge in education, both in formal education and in broader conceptions of education.

c. To what extent has neoliberalism established a particular way of generating knowledge in universities? How does neoliberal discourse impact the concerns of those of us who are researchers, professors, students, and/or administrators in higher education institutions? Neoliberal policies strain our understanding of higher education, seeking to redefine the very idea of ​​the university, its relationship with market institutions, and/or with the actors with whom it interacts in the community. This opens up debate on relevant issues such as the very identities of what is understood as a university and as knowledge itself.

Building on the points discussed in the previous section, this project focuses on the relationship between the commons and education within the context of expanding neoliberal discourse and its entrenchment in the region's socio-spatial practices. In this regard, the Working Group revisits some key ideas from the previously presented rationale.

Latin America is currently experiencing a period marked by numerous tensions, primarily driven by globalized capitalism (Laclau, 2005), which affect the political, social, cultural, and educational spheres. Within this context of transformations, which warrant careful consideration both as a general historical context and in relation to the specific characteristics of each local reality, the debate surrounding the construction and redefinition of the public sphere (Bobbio, 1998; Rabotnikof, 2005; Minteguiaga, 2006 and 2008) and its connection to education takes on renewed importance.

Faced with the multiple “threats” to communal life, it becomes urgent to reflect on this issue, considering the educational and subjectivation processes involved, from more traditional matters such as the role played by institutions, reforms, and educational policies (Treviño and Carbajal, 2015), to other issues that have gained increasing prominence in social science research, such as forms of participation and collective construction of public and political life (Melucci, 1999), the impact of teletechnologies on daily life (Derrida, 1998; Verón, 1999 and 2005), and new forms of citizenship construction (Naranjo, 2016), among others. The defense of the public sphere is imperative in the face of the unprecedented advance of deregulation, fragmentation, individuation, and consumerism. in the face of unprecedented forms of insensitivity and indifference towards the “other” (Bauman and Donskis, 2015); in the face of the privatization and colonization of the State apparatuses, through forms of illegality and parastatal structures; even including forms of market expansion driven by transnational and local centers of concentrated power, among other threatening realities (De Sousa Santos, 2005).

What we want to highlight, as a central issue for understanding our historical moment, is how communal life is constructed and the possibility of envisioning a shared future for our societies (Touraine, 2005). In this construction, education has historically been of paramount importance since the very emergence of our nation-states, shaping the processes of socialization and the inculcation of values ​​and norms of coexistence, and playing a decisive role in intergenerational bonds, the construction of citizenship, and collective life. Based on this, this framework project seeks to problematize and articulate "the common good" in its relationship to "education" (Buenfil, 2014) within a context of expanding neoliberal ideas. This problematization will be carried out through the three groups of questions raised above, with the aim of revitalizing its understanding by conceiving this link as both a conceptual and empirical problem. That is to say, a problem both theoretical and in its expression across the diverse realities of our region. The objective is to account, in the different lines of inquiry and the different national contexts, for the link between the neoliberal commons, its expression and the resistances it generates in different forms of education and knowledge creation in scientific systems and universities.

To answer the questions raised earlier, the Working Group proposes considering education in a broad sense (Buenfil, 2007 and 2014; Saur, 2014) and the commons as an element whose boundaries are contextual, fluid, and always in relation to those of the private sphere. It is important to emphasize that we consider it relevant to address these issues regionally. In this sense, we begin with the idea that all discourse, including, of course, neoliberal discourse, transforms its content when it interacts with other discourses (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). No discourse can autonomously impose its meanings on inert elements that merely receive its stimulus and respond serially accordingly. On the contrary, all hegemony is a constant articulation sustained by the mutual contamination and recomposition of its constituent elements. Therefore, to define the neoliberal forms of education and the commons, it is essential to consider the regional and national context in which neoliberalism operates, in addition to its local manifestations. The particular character it acquires in each experience will depend on the available discourses in each case. Thus, this approach assumes the centrality of including regional spaces as a relevant interpretive axis, within a multi-scalar and geopolitical analysis that involves national and global dimensions. The underlying assumption is that national dynamics in the region, while following the global determinants of neoliberalism, acquire local characteristics when they are territorialized. It will be especially important for this Working Group, then, to investigate these forms of articulation and effects between neoliberal discourse and experiences related to territory, gender, youth, public policies, educational policies at all levels, including university, administration, and the production of academic/scientific knowledge.

This problematic articulation between the commons and education in neoliberal contexts involves a multitude of themes and analytical levels, which can be approached from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, as well as conceptual traditions and developments. From this multitude of themes, we have identified three that will be of particular interest to the Working Group and that synthesize the groups of questions raised earlier.

- To clarify the idea of ​​common and community that underpins the neoliberal discourse in the region.

- To analyze the role that education, in its broadest sense, plays in that idea of ​​community.

- Review the effects of neoliberal practices on university work.

This project thus entails a conceptualization of education based on its connection to the common good and shared social space, giving rise to readjustments and disputes among institutions, policies, individual and collective subjects, civil organizations, the State, mass media, and others. It is worth noting that our understanding of the public and the educational is invariably anchored in the more traditional or conventional discussions and perspectives on education, politics, policies, participation, and democracy; but it is clear that we move beyond that. Although we recognize these aspects as important for the analysis and struggle for the observance of rights, the working profile of our Working Group and its theoretical and analytical approach is to weave a discussion with other contemporary political, cultural, and social processes of medium and long duration in order to go beyond the conventional understanding of education, policies, and the public sphere (Delgado, 2005; Arfuch, 2010).